


into the ocean tides

by callmefairyofthesea



Series: just because it's temporary doesn't mean it's worth less [2]
Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Friendship, M/M, Post Season 5, Romance, but close, not quite a rebound couple, same with Titans East, the rest of the team is there but they don't really get any screen time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29740749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmefairyofthesea/pseuds/callmefairyofthesea
Summary: Heartsore after the war with the Brotherhood of Evil and Raven’s rejection, Gar falls into the ocean in love with someone else.Set in the same universe as "no man is an island."
Relationships: Beast Boy/Aqualad, Garth/Garfield Logan
Series: just because it's temporary doesn't mean it's worth less [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2185842
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	into the ocean tides

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes, I think the episode Deep Six makes a *lot* more sense if Beast Boy is nursing a crush on Aqualad and is a little too heteronormative to realize it. Also, Aqualad spends the entire episode not noticing Raven and Starfire crushing on him, so he gives me Vibes TM. 
> 
> This takes place a week or two after "homesick." The Tower is crowded with honorary Titans, and Titans East hasn’t gone back home yet. Garth (Aqualad) has been rooming with Gar for the last few days, and uh… this is the result.

Garth realizes in the middle of March, lying in sand at the edge of this tiny rock island, hair soaked in the green-dyed surf of golden sunshine pooled through ocean tides four hours past noon, that he is loosely infatuated.

He thinks it began a week ago, sometime in the hazy aftermath of a war that is over, between the crumpled sleeping bags of too many people in the long hallways of Titan Tower waiting for the official paperwork to go through. After most of a year in Jump City, babysitting this beach project home that his friends have poured their lives into, it feels strange to leave his borrowed bunkbed. He remembers the weight of green eyes pressed into his back while he packed his things into a duffel and swung it over one shoulder.

“Thanks for letting me crash in your room,” he had said, even though he wasn’t looking forward to napping in the hallway with strangers on concrete, even though he had gotten used to the smell of pine and ocean bedsheets.

It probably began a week ago, when Beast Boy, who is more prone to long silences than Garth remembers, leaned against the door and laughed hollowly. His voice, deeper, quieter, had softly pointed out that he didn’t need both bunk beds. That Garth was welcome to room with him, as long as he was still in Jump.

Garth realizes in the middle of March, staring at the sheet of light that turns Beast Boy’s green scales gold, minnow fins spiraling through the shallows and foam, that he likes the sound of Beast Boy’s breath, late at night, too fast before sinking into sleep. That he likes the glint of green on his left, fathoms below on morning swims, when he needs space from Roy and from Karen, when the twins are yelling at a yellow suit that runs faster than them.

“I miss Atlantis,” he says casually to the green minnow, which is not something he usually admits, not to people who are used to living on solid ground and breathing the dry bones of oxygen without two hydrogen atoms paired.

The minnow that is Beast Boy turns its tiny fish head. _What’s it like?_

“Home.” He does not have to speak aloud, not when Beast Boy is shapeshifted into underwater creatures, but he likes the way his vocal cords vibrate above the surface. “It’s been a long time since I visited.”

_Day trip?_

“Ha.” It puffs out of him, amusement soft like the white clouds blowing overhead. “You’re kidding.”

_I’m not needed around here for anything. The Tower is cramped._

“What, you mean now?”

_Why not?_

“Because it’s irresponsible.”

_I bet I could beat you if we raced there._

Garth shoves the butts of his hands into the sand, grounds his heels in the shards of sea rock. “I’m not the competitive one.”

_That’s not how I remember it._

Water flicking sideways, the green minnow rippling into something longer and sleek, and Garth traces his lips with his tongue. Thinking this is stupid, but he is loosely infatuated with their week-long routine of escaping into the ocean tides together.

* * *

“You’re quiet today.”

But maybe Garth is overthinking it. After all, they both crashed against the rocks at five in the morning, muscles shuddering with exhaustion, eyelids pressed shut to hold in the memories of Kaldur and Tula and his King. Holding in the coral branches that fanned over pearl and ocean stone, the smooth-washed caverns, the smell of brine and damp, still air. After all, they both staggered up to their room too close to dawn, and they both collapsed on the bottom bunk and overwhelmed the pine with sea salt.

No one noticed they left, which makes Garth think they should do it again, before his team packs up for their own Tower built into the underside of wet cliffs and shadows. This is the longest he has been away from Karen and Roy, the twins. Hidden in the deep undercurrent of nostalgia for Atlantis, he thinks he misses them too. It’s hard to find the time, the space for little moments, when Robin has overfilled the walls with heroes.

 _Just tired,_ the starfish says, arms extended over a small water pool cupped inside a porous rock. _Didn’t sleep well._

“Oh.” Garth thinks he should apologize because he might have shoved Beast Boy into the corner of the wall in the bottom bunk they somehow shared, and he knows his hair was wet and stained the pillowcases. The loose infatuation bucks behind the vesicles of his heart, shouting that maybe Beast Boy is not strange to relationships with people like him.

Garth is tired of people like Roy, who likes to fall hot and heady into his Tower pool and push him away in the morning, and he is tired of Roy’s confusion when he tells him _no, not again._

But Beast Boy’s body was warm this morning, limbs folded around Garth’s chest like an octopus, his head tucked into Garth’s still-damp collarbone in some sort of desperate search for human connection. Not that Garth is human.

“I’m sorry. I should have used the top bunk.”

_It’s not that._

“Then what is it?”

The starfish’s arms pucker upwards toward the late dusk light of purple-pink. _I got invited to join the League._

Draping an arm over the porous rock that holds Beast Boy’s pool water, Garth rolls the words over in his head. Figures out that they don’t sound happy. “I’m guessing you said no.”

_I haven’t said anything yet._

“Because…”

_I feel like I’m supposed to say yes._

“That’s a bad reason to say yes.”

 _I know. Believe me, I know. It’s just been some real shitty days in a row, and like—I know it gets better. I know that in a couple of years, this week isn’t even going to register. But I’m so_ tired _of things going wrong_. _I thought I could get through this war because I…_ The starfish chokes the thought back, as if not used to the free flow of telepathy between them.

“You’ve fought them before.”

_Yeah. I’ve fought them before. But I ran into Terra last week near the high school and some sort of Slade-bot. And now the League is dangling membership in front of me, as if that makes up for them not helping us fight the Brotherhood or Trigon._

Garth is familiar with this argument, nights of bitterness with his King, wondering why his time with the Titans was somehow _less._ “Terra’s alive?”

 _She doesn’t remember me. She doesn’t_ want _to remember me is the real kicker._

“You…dated, right?” Garth had forgotten this, between news clippings of statues in crumbled caverns, and his loose infatuation fumbles a little looser.

 _Sort of._ The starfish’s mind bows down around melancholy. _I just miss my friend._

Suddenly the pool of water overflows, the starfish’s body popping, and then bones crack into place, and a long body stretches into the dusky sky. After staring at a starfish for the better part of three hours, Garth is not used to the slick of water across green skin and muscle, bare torso tucked into too-small jeans. Beast Boy seems taller, somehow, than he did this morning, last night, when they were tangled together in wet sheets and fatigue. As blood flushes into his cheeks, Garth turns away.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Don’t be,” says Beast Boy, his voice hoarse from not talking aloud. “Want to go to Atlantis?”

“Now?”

“You got something better to do?”

“You ready to lose again?”

Garth dives into the water, arms extended, his chest scraping against the rocks at the bottom of this shallow beach, and he falls back into the ocean tides in which Beast Boy is his next life story arc. This loose infatuation that might swim for love.

* * *

Beast Boy is human, curled up in the bottom bunk where Garth can’t see him, but that doesn’t keep him from imagining the smooth line of green skin stretched across freshly laundered sheets. Imagining the flicker of golden eyelashes on sunburned cheeks, the twitch of his bare torso exhaling. Though the pine smell has been washed out with detergent, the ocean breeze through the open window keeps the room familiar.

“How long until you leave?” Beast Boy asks below him, and his voice is barely a dream of a whisper, mumbled low like the howl of storms at sea.

“I don’t know. Bee wants to stay until we’ve established all of the new Titan branches. I think she’s trying to poach Herald for us.”

“Good luck. Hot Spot latched onto him fast.”

Garth stares at the ceiling, which is hot-glued with glow-in-the-dark stars, and thinks he should sleep instead of chasing another pretty smile. Because that has gone so well for him before. “Why? Do you not want me here?”

Silence. Not even the sound of breathing, smooth and slow.

“Beast Boy?”

Suddenly Garth feels a hot, dry hand on his shoulder, and he arches his neck to see two eyes in the dark, luminescent like deep-sea jellyfish, glittering with reflected light where Beast Boy is hanging onto the bedposts. Opening his mouth, he finds no words come out. Just a hitched gasp of surprise.

“What is this?” Beast Boy asks, fangs glinting silver, expression smooth like the ocean never is.

“What is…what?”

“You and me. What is this?”

Though he expects his stomach to sink, Garth is surprised by a flurry of warm bubbles and finds his heartbeat floating away. “It doesn’t have to be anything.”

But he touches his hand over Beast Boy’s, glides their fingers into netted handholds. Finds his lips wet from where his tongue has smoothed over them in anticipation.

“I just got rejected,” says Beast Boy, not moving closer, not moving away. “By someone I really care about.”

“Terra?”

“Raven.”

Garth leans forward in the bed, drawn to the dry curls that spill over Beast Boy’s forehead, coarser and thicker than Atlantean hair. His hand tucks them behind a pointed ear. He has never heard anyone purr before, stilted like a boat motor. “Am I not your type?”

“That’s not the problem.” A low whine pitches through the blackness of their shared room, and Garth tells himself not to get attached, not if Beast Boy is as inaccessible as Roy. Not if Beast Boy is just looking to forget.

“I can back off. If you’re not looking for a relationship.”

“A relationship?” Beast Boy gasps, softer than a whisper.

“I’m not looking to be jerked around by someone who can’t commit. I’ve done that long enough with…other people.”

Beast Boy’s bare chest ripples, one leg sliding over the edge of the top bunk to pull himself into bed with Garth. And then he is crouched inches away, shadowed lines of a silhouette with reflective pupils. “I’m not that kind of person.”

“What do you think this is?” Garth asks.

Chapped lips press a slow, dry kiss to his cheek. The glowing eyes pull back. “Slow,” says Beast Boy. “I think this is slow.”

“You’re in my bed.”

“Sorry. I—I shouldn’t be giving you the wrong message if we’re just…um…testing the waters?”

“No,” says Garth suddenly, because it has been a long time since he has felt vulnerability like this, and Beast Boy is the kind of open book he so rarely gets to keep. “Stay.”

* * *

Later, Garth kisses him in the glow of deep-sea crystals, so soft that the bright lamps of his green eyes squeeze shut, so soft that he forgets Beast Boy can’t breathe water indefinitely. So soft that he almost doesn’t feel the sharp clench of fingers in his biceps warning him to pull up, away, and toss them into the air-filled cavern twenty feet upwards, where he and Kaldur used to spar, where Tula sharpened her spears and stolen fishermen knives.

In twenty years of life below the waves, Garth has memorized the cutting tunnels that wind through Poseidonis, the perfect alcove for balancing Beast Boy against his hips, the nook with the bioluminescent algae that blazes purple and blue.

“I think I really like you,” Beast Boy says once when their mouths part for air, trailing a curious finger down the gills on Garth’s neck.

It burns inside him, so much nicer than what Garth is used to hearing, and he hopes that Karen lets them stay another month, another year, because he is going to miss midnight swims to Atlantis, races to Jump City’s dock, quiet conversations of two strangers who are learning how to be lovers and friends, stolen moments of something more mundane and beautiful than what heroes usually hope to experience outside the ocean tides of escape.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to think of Gar and Garth as a convenience couple. A competitive couple. Not quite a rebound couple. The kind of love that feels easy with everything else going on. 
> 
> The follow-up short (let me down easy, before you go) is told from Gar’s POV.


End file.
